Thursday, March 3, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, efforts to prop
up Haider al-Abadi continues, Moqtada al-Sadr claims death threats
against him, Brett McGurk visits Iraq, a former ally of Hillary
Clinton's makes an immunity deal with the FBI, and much more.

Tuesday, War Hawk Hillary Clinton managed to dupe enough people to win the Democratic Party primary in seven out of eleven states.

Today?

Her e-mail scandal continues to haunt. And a new development has many
people talking -- a former employee has made a deal to testify with the
FBI to talk in exchange for immunity. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano (WASHINGTON TIMES) offers his analysis which includes:

It is fair to call this a scandal because it consists of the public
revelation of the private and probably criminal misdeeds of the nation’s
chief diplomat during President Obama’s first term in office. Mrs. Clinton’s
job as secretary of state was to keep secrets. Instead, she exposed
them to friend and foe. The exposure of state secrets, either
intentionally or negligently, constitutes the crime of espionage. For
the secretary of state to have committed espionage is, quite simply,
scandalous.We are not addressing just a handful of emails. To
date, the State Department has revealed the presence of more than 2,000
emails on her private server that contained state secrets — and four
that were select access privilege, or SAP. The SAP emails require
special codes in order to access them. The codes change continually, and
very few people in the government have the codes. SAP is a subcategory
of “top secret,” and it constitutes the highest level of protected
secrecy, for the utmost protection of the government’s gravest secrets.
It is unheard of for SAP-level data to reside in a non-secure,
vulnerable venue — yet that is where Mrs. Clinton caused four SAPs to reside.Mrs. Clinton’s
allies in the State Department have perpetrated the myth that the 2,000
emails were recently upgraded to reflect their secret contents. That is
untrue. The emails possess secret status by virtue of their contents,
not because of any markings on them. Mrs. Clinton
had a legal obligation to recognize state secrets when she saw them, no
matter their markings or non-markings. On her first day on the job, she
swore under oath that she recognized and understood that legal
obligation and she promised to comply with it. She did not comply.

Hillary
Clinton is a psychopath and a war criminal, [who
said] “we came, we saw, he died,” mimicking Julius
Ceasar and laughing hysterically after Colonel
Kaddafi, my former client, was sodomized with a
knife and beaten to death. She’s a certified
psychopath and war criminal.

On the immunity deal, Adam Goldman (Washington Post) reports:The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State
Department staffer who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server
as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of
classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The
official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano,
who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the
server in her New York home in 2009.

First he said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights but now the IT specialist, who set up Hillary Clinton's controversial private email server, is ready to cooperate with the FBI.

In
doing so, Bryan Pagliano, 39, has been granted immunity by the Justice
Department as it continues its criminal investigation into whether or
not the current Democratic Presidential candidate mishandled classified
information.

The kindest possible reading of this news for Clinton is that
Pagliano was simply nervous to talk about how -- and why -- he had set
up the email server, and granting him immunity lets him speak freely
without any concern that he might get into trouble.Maybe. But
it's my strong impression that the Justice Department doesn't go around
granting immunity to people unless the person getting the immunity may
be able to shed light on an important part of the investigation. After
all, if Pagliano a) knew nothing or b) did nothing wrong, why would he
need immunity to talk to the FBI?

That is because the line between what is classified and what is not
is “not inherently obvious,” and charging the former secretary of state
would require prosecutors to prove that she knew what she was handling
crossed that line, said Barry J. Pollack, a white-collar criminal
defense lawyer at Miller & Chevalier who defended convicted CIA
leaker Jeffrey Sterling

“If something has not been deemed
classified, you’re asking a person to intuit how somebody else would
make a subjective decision and hold that person responsible for the fact
that they didn’t anticipate that somebody else might view the document
as classified,” he said. “It’s almost a Rorschach test. Different people
view it differently.”

Despite the above and so much more, the media chorus is for . . .
Senator Bernie Sanders to see his campaign as over. The independent or
'independent' US media has taking to singing the same song over and over
as David Sirota notes;

In earlier times, in better times, it would be the one accused of not
protecting state secrets who the media would be insisting end their
campaign.

Today, the US Defense Dept announced/claimed/insisted:

Strikes in IraqAttack, fighter, ground-attack, and remotely piloted aircraft
conducted 21 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s
government:-- Near Baghdadi, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.-- Near Huwayjah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun and two ISIL fighting positions.-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike destroyed an ISIL anti-air artillery piece.-- Near Kisik, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed 27 ISIL rocket rails.-- Near Mosul, seven strikes struck four ISIL tactical units
and destroyed three ISIL vehicles, 12 ISIL assembly areas, and 25 ISIL
bed-down locations, and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position.-- Near Ramadi, three strikes destroyed an ISIL vehicle, an
ISIL front-end loader, an ISIL bed down location, and an ISIL petroleum,
oil and lubricant truck.-- Near Samarra, two strikes struck two separate large ISIL
tactical units and destroyed 9 ISIL vehicles, three ISIL VBIEDs, an ISIL
fighting position, an ISIL supply cache, and three ISIL fuel trucks.-- Near Sinjar, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed five ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL assembly area, an ISIL
mortar position, and suppressed an ISIL mortar fire position.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.

PM Al-Abadi reviewed coalition support with Ambassador @brett_mcgurk and US technical assistnace for reform agenda

18 retweets22 likes

Brett hasn't lit up Arabic social media with his visit, however, a large
amount of discussion revolves around a rumored trip by Joe Biden in the
next week to Iraq.

Meanwhile, a joint press conference was supposed to take place today. NATIONAL IRAQI NEWS AGENCY reports
that cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr was supposed to
participate in a satellite press conference with the leader of the
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Ammar al-Hakim and that journalists were
present and waiting when the delay turned into a cancellation with no
explanation offered.

Moqtada has been very busy of late shoring up support for Iraq's
faltering prime minister Haider al-Abadi. (US Vice President Joe Biden
also tried to lend Haider a hand with a phone call yesterday.)

Last Friday, Moqtada sent his followers into Baghdad's Tahrir Square to
show support for reform measures that Haider had proposed a week before.

He has called for his followers to turn out this Friday at the gates of the Green Zone.

It's not a protest.

It's a rally.

If you doubt it, ALL IRAQ NEWS reports Baghdad Operations Control has announced they will be providing security for the rally.

Of course, they didn't protect real protesters, not from December 2011
through Janaury 2014, when actual protests took place in Baghdad.

Instead, they harassed the press (to keep them from covering the
protests), they harassed and attacked the protesters, followed them home
to intimidate them, etc.

While Nouri plots his return, Haider tries desperately to hang on to the
post of prime minister and to push through reforms or 'reforms.' As Sheikh (DAR ADDUSTOUR) notes
rumors of efforts on the part of Haider to make backdoor deals with
members of the National Alliance (largest Shi'ite political alliance in
Iraq) in order to push through his reforms or 'reforms.'

As noted earlier, US Vice President Joe Biden attempted to lend a hand yesterday:

The White House

Office of the Vice President

For Immediate Release

March 02, 2016

Readout of Vice President Biden’s Call with Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi of Iraq

The Vice President spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi
today and offered condolences to the people of Iraq targeted by ISIL’s
indiscriminate and cowardly attacks in Baghdad and other cities. The
Vice President reaffirmed the United States' unwavering commitment to
Iraq’s unity and stability in the fight against ISIL, including
coalition military assistance as requested by the Iraqi government. The
Vice President also pledged continued U.S. support as Iraq seeks to
stabilize and strengthen its economy and reiterated the U.S. commitment
to work with G-7 and other international partners, as well as
international financial institutions, to ensure Iraq has the financial
resources it needs to fight ISIL. The Vice President reassured Prime
Minister Abadi of the United States’ steadfast support for Iraq’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity and its efforts to establish
positive relations with regional states based on the principle of
non-interference, under the Strategic Framework Agreement.

In the name of decency, humanity, and
truth, we call on President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry,
and all members of the United States Senate and House of
Representatives to recognize and give public expression to the fact that
Christians in Iraq and Syria—along with Yazidis, Turkmen, Shabak, and
Shi’a Muslims—are victims of a campaign of genocide being waged against
them by ISIS. In pleading that this genocide be recognized and called by
its name, we join Pope Francis, the United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom, the European Parliament, and many
others. We urge our fellow Americans and all men and women of goodwill
everywhere to join us in prayer for those of all faiths who are victims,
and in determination to act in the humanitarian and political spheres
to aid them and put an end to their victimization.Robert
P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the
James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton
UniversityCornel West, Professor of Philosophy and
Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary and Class of 1943
University Professor in the Center for African American Studies,
Emeritus, Princeton University